


Another Year: A Short History

by orphan_account



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Disturbing Themes, Gen, Horror, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Temporary Character Death, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 20:23:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3950476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikey dies, and then he lives. And maybe he had to die so that he could live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Year: A Short History

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I Think I'll Wait Another Year](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3945430) by [dear_monday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dear_monday/pseuds/dear_monday). 



> When one of your favorite authors posts something it inevitably inspires you to write a remix fic, am I right? Or am I right.
> 
> And, because it's me, I made it creepy. Sorry, I guess. /o\

The saying goes, when it rains during a funeral, it means the person didn’t want to die.

 

The first thing Mikey recognizes is the absolute, eternal heaviness of the world. The world has truly never been this heavy. It’s a strange feeling, waking up to darkness that sits atop you; it feels like Stonehenge was build right on top of your body. 

He opens his mouth to see if he could maybe, possibly take a breath, only to realize that he doesn’t need to. His lungs are dried leaves, he can almost hear them rattle in his ribcage. So he screams, because it seems to be the only logical thing to do, but his voice is a dull echo that sinks into the darkness around him effortlessly.

 

_a. The air smells like rain but you know it’s miles and miles away and by the time it gets here, it will caress your dead body and you won’t feel it anymore. Its wetness will slide down your skin and rainwater will mix with your blood._

_b. He’ll find you and you’re okay with it. Maybe not. You’re not sure, actually. Your head is a mess, you’ve drunk too much, swallowed too much. You stumble and you giggle to yourself. You giggle as you walk towards your death._

 

The light is blinding as the wooden curtain of his coffin is lifted. Bits of grain entangle in his hair and fall behind the lapels of his old suit. He panics for a second, it’s the only emotion that manages to grab him. He can’t see anything and his heart is silent in his chest, and he wants to be dead because he should be.

But then two hands grip him, fingers slip down his arms in heavy effort. Apparently, it’s not easy to lift someone out of their grave. Mikey’s retinas are silly things now, his eyes absorb the light slowly and then offer a new view. He sits up, the new view is about as blinding as the light, or the darkness before. 

“I knew you’d come,” Gerard says and a terrible sound gurgles up Mikey’s throat. For a second, he’s afraid he’ll cough up blood or phlegm, but what comes out is just an old-fashioned sob, and he doesn’t know where it came from. He mostly feels numb, but somehow, seeing those eyes and that face and feeling those hands stirs something up at his very core and the first sob is followed by a second one. They are dry and empty and in their vastness, they are gut-wrenching.

 

_a. You don’t sleep because you can’t blink. Your eyes are as dry as your sobs were, and your tongue is still a little swollen, even though he pours you three glasses of water every single hour. Your body is a collection of limbs and dead organs, but the whole thing about souls must be true, because even though your heart is a silenced drum, you come to feel something. You don’t remember feelings so you can’t organize them, you keep them imprisoned in your chest. But they’re there._

_b. You don’t sleep because you’re busy thinking. According to Romero, you should want to eat his brains, shatter the windows of your old living room and flee, but you have no such cravings. And you wonder whether they’re just still asleep and once they wake up they’ll make you into a thing. He looks at you like you’re a thing sometimes. But then, he must love you, because you’re the one sitting here, you’re the one he helped out of his grave; your mother and your father are nowhere to be seen._

 

Their conversations are like short diary entries at first. Mikey makes it his day-to-day routine to avoid talking about what happened and he spends his time sitting quietly in the living room or in Gerard’s room, depending on where Gerard himself is. Mikey prefers to stay close, perhaps to show his brother that he’s really there – not like before, Mikey knows he was a lousy brother before. He wants to do good this time, it might just be his last shot at life. 

Mikey feels – he feels now, emotions blossom in his chest and it feels like spring – like they started a game when Gerard took that shovel and helped him out, and it’s a silent, long long longest game known to man. 

Gradually, of course, he starts despising it, frustration sets up camp right next to his gratefulness. But he could never stop being grateful. He’s tired of tip-toeing around Gerard and answering the same question each day, solid indicators of what time it is 

( _Do you need something to eat?_ No. _Are you feeling okay?_ Yes. _Want another glass of water?_ Sure, okay.)

It feels so dull to be talking about all that when they could be out there. Mikey wants to put on his old sunglasses to cover the death in his eyes and he wants to grab his older brother’s hand like when they were kids and simply lead them out the front door. But he stays silent, for Gerard’s benefit, the wooden floors barely creak when he walks around the house at night. He gets tired of that, too, simply lies down on the couch and his hand goes over the edge, outreached much like Gerard’s is. They’re not touching, but as they both still, they would make for a lovely post-war, peaceful sculpture. There is something else, though, like when filth gets underneath your nails and it's impossible to get it out.

 

_a. You begin to doubt your motives. Why did you die at all? Was it you who did it really or was it someone else? You wonder, did Gerard talk to you while you were dead – and why is your grave a spot in the middle of a nameless field? You ask yourself, does death tweak memories, and if someone spoke lies near your grave, would your newly renowned conscience accept them as truth?_

_b. You can’t imagine that there was a time in your life when you weren’t this._

 

He’s actually thinking about brain tissue. Looking out of the living room window, the setting sun is like a skull that has been cracked open and the pinkish horizon is like its spilled insides. It means wind, they say, when sunsets wear pink cloaks. 

“Gee?” he asks; he seriously needs to stop thinking about that. 

He imagines that his heartbeat once filled silences like the one that follows. Small-talk is boring and he ignores most of it, his fingers are getting restless. It all comes down to only one specific thing, after all.

“Am I different?” and, ultimately, “I wasn’t happy before.”

Mikey watches it all unfold on Gerard’s face. His older brother looks worried and considers Mikey for a long time before answering. For Gerard, it ultimately comes down to this: Do you think you could be happy now?

Mikey can’t exactly be killed now – wouldn’t do much if someone tried to tear his heart out. There is, of course, the bullet to the brain, but he doesn’t think it would ever come to that, not really. Still, he takes care so as to look away and answer carefully.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, “Maybe. 

Gerard’s face relaxes and so does Mikey. They smile at each other, and the smile alone could be the longest diary entry they’ve ever written.

And that’s when it happens. The gentle silence between them is interrupted by a low growl of Mikey’s stomach. The horizon still looks like a cracked skull.

“I think I’m hungry,” Mikey says, surprised to see that he’s not terrified. He doesn’t want to shatter windows. He doesn’t want to eat Gerard’s beautiful mind. Not yet.

 

_a. You don’t remember it but now you know that the hands that pulled you out of your grave were the same hands that put you in it. You see it in his cautious eyes, in the way he smiles at you in a crooked way that expects trouble. He thinks you don’t remember, and you don’t; but you know anyway._

_b. It’s okay, though. He won’t kill you now._

_He’ll kill_ for _you, to keep you safe._


End file.
